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One survivor’s thoughts after a rape. Names have been changed.
Dear James, I’m writing you to share my feelings about our interactions in the past couple of weeks. Some of your actions have been hurtful to me, and I thought that maybe if I put my thoughts into writing, you might be able to see where I’m coming from.  As a teenager, I was really confused about the concept of a “tease.” I heard some of my male peers say, more or less, that teases were the worst and they hated them. I weeded out from their comments that the basic definition of a tease was a girl who fooled around with a guy, but didn’t have sex with him. Wait, did that mean I was a tease?
1. Give them information on their risk reduction options.
For pregnancy, they could:
You want to show your support and say the right thing, but sometimes it’s hard to know what will help and what will be triggering.
Here are six ideas for the right things to say from a survivor who has had dozens of these conversations. |